Tips for starting a CNC Side Business with an X-carve/CNC

Top left hand of amazon is a Departments drop down box, you can find it in there. Also contains all info needed to sign up.

When does business pick up for you after Christmas?

Tax return time! Everyone’s a baller at tax time lol.

It’s all gold from there, spring makes ppl happy, happy people spend cash lol

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I purchased my 1000mm machine in October, and have probably made a little over a thousand, which is pretty good I think. Prior to owning an x carve I usually scrolled most that I now carve. For the most part I gear women as my target audience. Things just feel better that way. Take advantage of Facebook. As soon as I did my first test carve I posted a video of it on Facebook and almost got 4 orders
just off of the video. Take advantage of seasons as in coming up is valentine’s, then Easter. You do have to make it first, you can describe something all you want but for the most part they can’t see what’s in your head until they can tangibly see it. Door hangers are good sellers using they’re last name or a catchy phrase.

You’ll likely never be able to compete with hobby lobby type pieces so don’t try to. Try to think of things around a $20 to $30 price range that aren’t too time consuming. Ride thru neighborhoods and see what people are putting on their doors. You can also do payment request through messenger on Facebook it’s free and it goes right into your account instantly with no fees. Get half up front so they won’t back out after you invested time. Also make sure you take good clear aesthetically pleasing pictures of everything piece you do that’s got advertisement

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I have made and sold over 100 cutting boards, unrelated to CNC, but never sold one for more than $45. How on earth could you make whats in that pic in an hour?

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Just stumbled across this thread. Great information here! Looking forward to getting my xcarve once my taxes come back and trying my hand at making a few bucks.

Does anyone else have experiences to share? I really love reading and learning from those.

Thanks!

Just finished reading through this thread, and it has been very helpful. Nice seeing how others have tackled challenges. My main challenge right now is time, due to having 10 month old twins…time is scarce, and I only got my machine in September, so my wife and I have full time jobs, 10 month old twins, and a constant evolving learning curve. And while I have only made $500 I have been happy about the constant learning that I have been able to do.

Thank you for posting your story. I’m in a very similar situation, not with twins, but with two girls one 7 and the other is a pre-teen. Both my wife and I work full time and seem to have full time jobs when we get home with all the things the girls are into so time will be hard to come by when I get the Xcarve. I’m inspired to hear that since September you have been able to bring in $500.00…that’s awesome and congrats! My main goal is to sell enough to pay off the machine in my first year. I have been studying up on these forums and you tube and cant wait to get started!

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Congratulations @BenjaminLipinski @MichaelFink on your success. I have two grand babies I take care of and it is hard to find time to get into the shop. Keep at it. It’s well worth it.

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Thank you! Just for the sake of full disclosure, that $500 (actually $490) came from two jobs and was not profit. One came from a cornhole board set that I carved in the Arizona Cardinals logo and my friends name and then backfilled it with the West System epoxy resin, that was $250, but I went through a good amount of epoxy as it was my 1st time, I netted about $100 when all said and done. The other were two cutting boards, one inlayed with Washington State University, and the other inlayed with the state of Washington and an apple, I had the material on-hand so my cost was only about $10.

I’m in the same boat as you, if I can pay for the machine and the $350 that I dropped for vCarve Desktop (and hopefully some upgrades) in year 1 then I am more than happy.

-Mike

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Thanks Phil, always love seeing your videos, they have been a great source of guidance, especially when I 1st started reading/watching. Yeah, time is hard, but thankfully I insulated the ceiling in my garage and my twins room, and I switched over to a Vacmaster VF408 shop-vac recently from my Ridgid and it dropped the noise in my garage easily by half (Best $60 I have spent), so I am able to run the machine at night.

-Mike

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Mike,

Funny that you mentioned insulation as this is a big to do for me soon. My garage is my workspace and here in Western NY winters suck and working in the garage can be difficult at times. I’m starting with getting the garage door insulated and the spring adjusted to handle the added weight and that’s happening next week.

After that I’m either going to do the walls (only two need insulation) which already have dry wall up so I either take it down, insulate and rehang or do blown in cellulose or I can go to the attic space and lay down rolled insulation or do cellulose?

Not sure where you live Mike but has the insulation helped with temps where you are or is it mostly for noise?

The garage is where my Xcarve is going to go so I would like to try and keep the temps up as long as possible when I’m out there.

For anyone in the north with the Xcarve in the garage would you mind sharing how you and the machine are doing in the cold? Or share how you insulated and keep your garage warmer?

Hey Ben,

I ended up doing mine for as much noise containment as possible, as I live in Arizona. So, while you have the brutal winters I have the brutal summers. If I stay in this house another summer I will be seriously considering a mini-split A/C unit, but so far I have sucked it up every summer and still been out there like any other day (time allowed).

FYI, my garage walls were already insulated, only did the ceiling, but for the interior house walls we cut 4" holes between all of the studs and then blew it in and recovered/textured/painted after. Was a fairly quick process…however this was before the kiddos came lol

-Mike

Thanks Mike! The more I read up and watch things I think the blown in is the way to go since the dry wall is already up and it looks like my wife (maybe brother) and I could handle this as a weekend job. I have heard the machines are usually free to rent as long as you buy the cellulose from them.

Thanks for the information! I really appreciate it!

No problem at all, happy to help. One other word of advice on this, is yes, at least here in AZ the machine rentals are free at Home Depot if you purchase 10 bags of the blown in insulation, but here is a nice tip, they give you a sizable contractor discount at 30 bags…I only needed 15, but the guy told me to buy 30 and then just return what I didn’t end up needing. This allowed me to get the machine rental free and then a discounted cost on the insulation, and had no issues returning the ones I didn’t use.

P.S. My fault for driving this thread off-topic lol, apologies.

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I was thinking the same thing… no way that cutting board was made in an hour including milling the wood and gluing up.

I have two items that I have produced in the shop that I could sell many but does not make sense. A personalized bottle opener with wood engraved handle that I sold for $30 , and a tool caddy that is made with $15 dollars worth of HDPE material and sells currently for $100… Its all just for fun if you cant make at least $50 an hour in the shop.

Are you talking about how did I cut it that fast or how did I design it that fast?

Maybe doing some craft shows ? Get your name and product out there

Hey Rick, what material did you use for your door sign? We’ve tried to use 7mm and 1/4" baltic birch plywood (which looks like what you’ve used in your picture) but the material has ended up breaking across the thinner designs, so we’ve more or less given up on making these types of signs for the time being.

Sorry didn’t see your response sooner. I used revolution plywood which I want to say is around .201 they make hard maple 1/4 plywood which I usually enter in at .22 what are you having problems with it breaking? I think it might be how your doing your tabs, just guessing. Typically anything over 2 square inches I do at least 2 tabs per negative cutout evenly across from each other if you don’t keep those negative cutouts stable they’ll usefully chatter around leaving a saw tooth looking cut or break. Afterwards I use a multi tool(random oscillator) with a really narrow(¼"to½") blade or a Rockwell bladerunner 2(the one that can mount on the wall) if you remove the arm you have unlimited capacity and I would almost say it’s made for cutting tabs.